- 3
- December
2013
Harry Böhme tells the cleantech exit story of Novaled to Samsung
Ecosummit TV: CFO Harry Böhme tells the cleantech exit story of Novaled to Samsung at ECO13 London. Founded in 2001, the Dresden-based startup is a world leader in OLED (Organic LED) materials and Samsung is the biggest customer. In September 2011, Corporate VC Samsung Ventures invested and Novaled’s management made sure to limit Samsung’s stake and control to 10%. 2 years later, Samsung Cheil Industries (aka Samsung Chemical) and Samsung Electronics acquired the remaining 90% for €260M, including an earnout of €30M bound to reaching further milestones. Novaled’s revenues grew from €10M in 2010 to €26M in 2012 (price sales ratio of 10). With €29M of venture capital injected in Novaled the returns are pretty healthy.
Read more- 16
- April
2013
Urban Keussen introduces Connecting Energies, the new CVC of EON
Ecosummit TV: Urban Keussen presents EON’s innovation strategy for its smart green utility transformation and introduces their new corporate venture capital (CVC) activities. At ECO12 Duesseldorf, Urban announced EON’s CVC called “Connecting Energies” that co-invests in mid and late stage startups in Europe and the US that are focused on distributed renewable energy, energy storage, smart grid and customers and data. Moreover, Urban and his team work on a lot of innovation that does not have a business case yet but may well have in the future. Thus they are open for joint projects with smart green startups, especially if their solution is able to accelerate the Energiewende (energy transformation), the key task of all utilities.
Read more- 9
- April
2013
Rolf Adam discusses critical infrastructure for the new energy system
Ecosummit TV: On 15 November 2012, the city of Munich experienced a power outage affecting 450.000 people, the first one in 20 years. Just in time Rolf Adam of Cisco goes on stage at Ecosummit Düsseldorf to discuss 6 megatrends affecting large and small utilities in their efforts to manage the critical infrastructure for the new energy system: economics, employees, resources, innovation, industry fragmentation and regulation. To be fit for the future, Rolf recommends that utilities take a system approach, embrace rapid innovation and align their business model with 2050 rather than betting the company on today’s industry setup.
Read more- 26
- March
2013
Bernard Scherrer discusses open innovation at EDF and introduces Electranova Capital
Ecosummit TV: Bernard Scherrer discusses open innovation at EDF, one of the biggest utilities in Europe. Part of the long-term innovation strategy is the new corporate venture capital fund called Electranova Capital that already made 2 startup investments in Actility (smart grid M2M applications) and Seatower (offshore wind foundations). To get the cooperation started, Bernard and his colleague Valerie are interested in doing pilot projects with the best cleantech startups in Europe that fit into their open innovation areas. Please get in touch if you are interested in doing business with EDF.
Read more- 14
- March
2013
Juergen Finke presents Evonik corporate venturing
Ecosummit TV: More and more corporates create their own venture capital business units to support external innovation that is relevant to their core business. One of the new kids on the block is Evonik, the German specialty chemistry group with €14.5B revenues and 33.500 employees in 2011. At Ecosummit Düsseldorf 2012, Juergen Finke unveils the investment strategy of Evonik Corporate Venturing. Having started at the beginning of 2012, Evonik dedicated a €100M fund, made 3 fund investments (HTGF, Pangea and Emerald) to run up the learning curve and is working on their first direct startup investments. If your startup matches the strategy and expertise of one of Evonik’s business units, go and talk to Juergen. Smart green corporate venture capital may be your best choice.
Read more- 10
- August
2012
Marie-Anne Brodschii presents the Veolia Innovation Accelerator
Ecosummit TV: Marie-Anne Brodschii, VP Innovation at Veolia, explains how Veolia drives cleantech innovation and how the cooperation with startups works in practice. The French corporate has got cleantech in its DNA and is pretty big: 230.000 employees generate €29.6B revenues and are active on 5 continents. Veolia’s business is focused on the management of water, waste, energy and energy efficiency. In fact, Veolia is very open towards smart green innovation coming from startups. To foster open innovation, Veolia launched the Veolia Innovation Accelerator (VIA) 2 years ago.
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